Slowly Melding
by Ivanolix
Summary: One night together wasn't enough to keep them going for fifty years. Glimpses into how Daniel and Vala's relationship developed and grew after that kiss in Unending.


Mitchell was the one to ask Sam to materialize a Scrabble board, but his idea of the game involved a race between players to use up all their tiles in creating their own individual board. It was fast and hectic, and he had no idea the game could be played any other way. But he lost taste after Sam and Daniel trounced him with their vocabulary and joined Teal'c, who had quietly declined to play, leaving the others to play the traditional way.

"You know I'm only staying because I don't have any desire to bang those Jaffa sticks around," Vala pointed out as she took her seven tiles. "This game is intrinsically unfair."

"So say you," said Daniel, his eyebrows high. "Imagine playing it with two archaeology parents at the age of eight."

"You admit that I'm smarter than you as an eight-year-old," said Vala with mock surprise. "Daniel, am I growing on you?" She placed her first word on the board while Daniel looked down at his tiles without answering her question.

"Uh, Vala, you can't use that word," commented Sam. "Scrabble is an English game."

"What?" demanded Vala. "You let Daniel get by with 'amour', which Teal'c assures me is of French origin, but you won't allow 'kree'?"

"'Kree' isn't in the dictionary," explained Daniel.

"Whose?" countered Vala with a glint in her eye. Daniel just gave her a look and Sam observed silently. "Daniel knows a whole separate language of archaeology words, and Sam knows science words, so I should be able to use Goa'uld words."

"There aren't any apostrophes in Scrabble," said Daniel without looking up.

"There could be," insisted Vala.

"We'll consider it for next time," soothed Sam. "Daniel?"

"'Viand'," he said, grinning and planting down his letters.

"I am not in any way convinced that that is English," said Vala pointedly. "Just so you know."

Sam withdrew to the Asgard core after that game ended, but Vala wasn't done. Daniel didn't know what fascinated her about the game, if anything did, but he was willing to continually correct her spelling for a chance to let loose all the words that were tangled in his head.

ooooooooo

"_It's been three months. Three months, Daniel!"_

They didn't speak much in words—Daniel thought it was prudent given his track record, and Vala never knew what to say in any case, but they didn't even verbalize their reasons. Skin upon skin spoke for them, as did the depths of eyes and the trivialities that they laughed over and discussed around what they had all termed the kitchen table. Needs were expressed in a manner that only they could understand, silent and yet overflowing with meaning.

But Vala sometimes feared the silence. She had reached for Daniel out of that fear as much as out of simple longing, a fear that wrapped around her oft ironclad heart and choked mercilessly. Sitting alone in her chamber when all that could be heard was the distant hum of the engine and the occasional soft pattering of Mitchell's shoes as he jogged around the ship, she wrapped her arms around herself and tried to breath easily.

"_Kneel before your god!"_

In, out, in, out.

"_Come, slave, and pleasure your god."_

In, out, in, out.

"_Your defiance shall be punished!"_

Three months of silent torment, with no speech or excitement to drown out the cacophony of memories that would never fully leave. Boredom was a gift Vala longed for, a state of mind where nothing filled her thoughts. She wished to have empty moments once again.

She wondered if Daniel would ever know, if he was merely in denial or as clueless as men were usually known to be. But he wasn't just comfort to her, so she refused to feel guilt as if she was using him. She wanted him even if he didn't fill her moments with pleasant thoughts. And he didn't, he couldn't. He feared emptiness the way she sometimes longed for it, and needed to flood himself with the knowledge of the Asgard, hide in its comforting vastness. Not for long, but just enough to keep the blankness away.

Sitting alone on the bridge, knees bent close to her chest, she hid from Quetesh by naming the stars. Fluffy, Pongo, Freckles, Puff—the Tau'ri had beautifully absurd naming patterns for all things non-human that were just mindless enough to let her continue for hours if necessary, and mindful enough to keep her attention. Smokey, Dancer, Rover, Bingo, Mr. Snuffles. Just a little longer, and then she would go find Daniel.

She didn't notice when Daniel found her. Slender arms wrapped protectively around her knees, chin placed between them, eyes cast upward and reflecting the myriad of glittering stars that moved too slow for the naked eye to discern—it was not how she intended to appear. And then she saw him out of the corner of her eye and jumped a little, but all he did was sit down beside her. She feared to acknowledge him further, but looked over and met his steady gaze.

No words were necessary as he finally understood.

ooooooooo

"Vala—Vala, I'm sorry," Daniel offered, in his habitual stumbling. "I shouldn't have—"

"Daniel, stop!" she commanded, putting up her hands to cover her face. "I don't want to hear you backtrack, and I don't want you to try to deny anything!"

"You can't think I meant to hurt you," pressed Daniel. "I know you have every reason to be furious—"

"No, Daniel, I'm not furious," said Vala, interrupting him again. "Or yes, I am, but not because of what you said. Don't you think I know that you don't look on me as the vision of perfection? Only one man ever did that, and I had to cure him of that. But then to act as if it was only thoughtless anger? Daniel, that's what makes me furious!"

"You think I meant all that," said Daniel wearily, striving to understand.

"You did," Vala said, with a shaky half-laugh. "Not to that extreme, I know, but the core was truth. And don't you dare try to hide it!" She had been pacing back and forth while he stood, but now she turned and moved close to him. "Daniel, I don't want false assurances and sugared praise. I'm not from your planet and I'm not like the women you've known. I've lived the largest complex lies you can imagine, and truth isn't going to hurt me. Not like more lies will."

"You didn't deserve what I said," said Daniel softly, sadly. "It wasn't the whole truth."

Vala stepped forward the last couple steps and leaned against Daniel, not putting her arms around him but just resting her head on his chest. "That's what I want, Daniel. The whole truth. I frustrate you more than anything else, and you also are the most infuriating man I have ever known—well, bar a few. We have more than that, but also no less than that. Just don't forget it."

"I love you," said Daniel simply. Vala leaned in further, and he softly put his arms around her. "I love you more than all the arguments, more than all the flaws, more than all the trouble."

Vala let out a deep breath, and reached up her arms to wrap around Daniel's neck. "That's better." She kissed him softly, and then rested her head on his shoulder again.

"It's a cruel fact of life that we anger most those we love most," whispered Daniel regretfully. "I'm sorry."

"We're broken, Daniel," said Vala flatly, honestly. "Just don't pretend we're anything better, and we'll make a world to hold our broken pieces together."

They stood in the dark rocking back and forth slowly, no fierce passion ruling them now, only two hearts quietly melding into one. The world wouldn't understand their brutal honesty. They couldn't ask the world's opinion even if they cared.

ooooooooo

Sam had learned to laugh before Daniel, in spite of all the odds. She rarely let loose, but Daniel had begun to notice more and more that the impulse was there. When she had lost her overly serious demeanor he had no idea, but she learned to laugh freely before Daniel, the 'open and honest' one. He didn't even notice that until the Odyssey.

Mitchell told jokes and Sam lost it, Teal'c deadpanned and she giggled, and Vala's twinkle-eyed wit had them both in stitches on several occasions—but Daniel merely smiled in the background. When had his life become so lacking in mirth? He loved and felt joy and amusement—but his work always clouded his emotions. He didn't realize this until after he had been cured.

The one-year anniversary of their interminable stay on this god-forsaken ship, and they all indulged in alcohol together. Daniel merely sipped, but he could feel the edges of his control becoming fuzzy even as Mitchell started off on an anecdote. Vala snuggled next to him at the table, downing enough alcohol to knock out anyone but her, his steely mischief-maker. Sam spluttered into her drink as Mitchell's eyebrows danced wildly at the end of his story, and Vala chuckled as Teal'c helpfully patted Sam's back.

"Teal'c, you are a horrible audience," said Mitchell, a slur in his speech and a characteristic cock of his head towards the Jaffa. "Don't you get Earth humor by now?"

"Learned humor is hardly more than amusing, Colonel Mitchell," answered Teal'c.

"Jaffa humor _is_ different than ours, Cam," assured Sam, wiping a happy tear from the corner of one eye.

"I wanna hear some," urged Mitchell. "Hell, I'd laugh at anything right now."

Teal'c eyebrow rose, a twinkle in his eyes as he looked at Sam. "Very well, Colonel Mitchell. A Serpent Guard, a Horesh Guard, and Setesh Guard, meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The Serpent Guard's eyes glow. The Horesh Guard's beak glistens. The Setesh Guard's…nose drips."

Sam tried to bite back a snicker of remembrance, but a bit of it escaped like the bullet from a gun. Teal'c mouth twitched, and Mitchell frowned in confusion. "Wha?"

Sam shook with inner laughter and Teal'c couldn't take it anymore, letting loose the strangest laugh any of them would ever hear. Sam lost it then, and Daniel began to feel the bubbling of amusement deep inside.

Then Vala turned to him, eyes wide and mouth a firm line. "Daniel, it's not funny," she admonished.

Daniel tried to keep a straight face, but his lips twitched. The corner of Vala's mouth trembled, and then as each could not be unaffected by the other, she burst out in frantic half-drunk giggles which Daniel could not resist. Before he knew it, they were both overcome with shaky sobs of uncontrollable laughter, unable to keep themselves upright as they leaned on each other in hysterical mirth. So he was a little drunk, but Daniel had never even been like this, laughing as if his heart would break. There was sadness intermingled with humor in his laugh, repressed grief maintained over decades finally being let loose in pure raw emotion, but more so he finally dropped his mantle of responsibility and guilt for the world and seized the moment.

And as they all recovered eventually, tear streaks from the overpowering emotion running down their cheeks, Daniel knew he wouldn't forget how to laugh again.

oooooooo

Twenty years down the unending road, and the Scrabble board was still set up in the mess hall. The pieces were worn, even the newer couple of apostrophes that Daniel had finally given in on—only two, though. Sam had once spoken of her regret that Jack O'Neill had not been trapped with them, for he had apparently tried many new things when trapped in time himself. All of them trapped now were systematic and not random, and so gravitated to repetition. Sam played the cello, Teal'c kelnoreemed and sparred with Mitchell, who sat alone in an F-302 for hours on end, and Daniel and Vala played Scrabble, among other things.

"Daniel darling, 'maus' is not English," put in Vala, brushing a silvering bit of hair out of her face.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, so it isn't," said Daniel, sighing and pulling back his tiles.

"If you have an apostrophe, you could put down 'ma'su'," she added helpfully.

"I thought I wasn't allowed to use Goa'uld," said Daniel.

"Well, if you have the tile…" said Vala, shrugging.

"Never mind, I have another word," said Daniel, adding in a mutter, "The rate my thoughts are leaving…"

"I don't mind that; I'll have the advantage soon," said Vala with a gentle grin.

"Not for long," said Daniel with a half snort.

"Daniel!" declared Vala. "Are you saying I'm old?" He looked up and smirked, a laugh line adding texture to his face. Vala sighed. "You are not an easy man to love, Daniel."

"Oh, that goes both ways," assured Daniel, only slightly wearily. Looking up, though, he added: "But one thing I haven't forgotten yet is that many cultures look upon love as, not a feeling, but a choice affected by feelings."

"I made a good choice," said Vala simply, putting out her word with precision.

Daniel nodded. "As did I."

"Even if it did mean letting you think I had poor spelling for all those years…" Vala trailed off, looking down at the board. Then she snuck a look up and smiled at Daniel's bewildered face. "You fell for it, didn't you?"

"You mean you spelled words incorrectly on purpose, just so that I would correct them?" Daniel said, frowning.

"I've always been good at finding the unique things some men will pay attention to a woman for," said Vala with a shrug.

"I'm an idiot," murmured Daniel.

"It's all right, dear, I knew that when I chose you," comforted Vala. "There! Triple word score finally, after all these years!"

ooooooooo

Life on the Odyssey was wearyingly simple, the only conflicts being those of personal matters. It was a good training ground for those who struggled with love, and these two at least had a secret hope that if they ever escaped, they wouldn't let their lessons go to waste. Love wasn't easy, but persevering in it brought only rewards.


End file.
